Rebecca Belmore: The Named and the Unnamed

Exhibition catalogue from Rebecca Belmore: The Named and the Unnamed at the Belkin (4 October–1 December 2002) with texts by Scott Watson, Charlotte Townsend-Gault and James Luna. During the summer of 2002, Rebecca Belmore was invited to use the space of the Belkin Satellite as a studio for producing works that would comprise her solo exhibition at the Belkin from 4 October-1 December 2002. The exhibition features five new works created during a residency at the Belkin Satellite. Belmore’s work stages a relationship between bodily performance and installation. Vigil is based on a street performance by Belmore in polemical commemoration of the women who have gone missing in the downtown east side of Vancouver. The performance gives a contemporary context to the installation The Named and The Unnamed, which is a reflection on the larger implications of the local event. Blood on the Snow evokes a deafening stillness, a scene of comfort disrupted by traces of violence. In a third installation, a canoe is in the process of overturning—a vessel emptied of its body, suspended over the black depths of water, or death. Moving from the narrative to the poetic, from action to quiet reflection, Belmore’s new work speaks of the larger questions plaguing human existential awareness.